It also was a strategic mistake to bury under the carpet the investigation for the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage, which was obviously orchestrated by our biggest ally. The US of A.
Was that not clear from the beginning? Nobody ever claimed it was for strategic purposes, the narrative was "we don't like nuclear anything, we will get rid of it we can bear the costs".
So I don't think you could even call it a strategic mistake, but masochism maybe?
Especially while keeping the exit date in the height of the fallout of a real strategic mistake, the dependence on cheap russian gas.
I think what is important to keep in mind: Merz is on the conservative, pro-economy side of the conservative party, whereas Merkel is not. She has a background in science. She never liked Merz.
Even though we use well under 25% of the fuel in even the most efficient reactors, the energy density of fissile fuel is many orders of magnitude higher than conventional fuels.
A decision to forego that benefit of energy density will be painful, especially if implemented quickly.
So, basically his own party, CDU was part of the coalition when nuclear exit was decided. The chancellor from his own party, Merkel decided to accelerate exit after Fukushima, while increasing dependency on Russian gas and blocking construction of renewables in CDU/CSU governed states. And now it is the previous government that failed the energy transition. Funnily enough, both this and previous governments declared current state of affairs very inefficient and bureaucratic and promised to fix it, so the question is, if German political mainstream in general is capable of making substantial improvement or we should tear the system apart and elect AfD+BSW combo as shock therapy.
Merz will say anything if it somehow benefits him and doesn't concern himself with facts.
> German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, admitted recently that Germany’s departure from nuclear energy was a serious strategic mistake, saying the policy has made the country’s energy transition “the most expensive in the entire world.”
Even if that were the case, nuclear had no impact on the cost of the transition.
> eliminating nuclear power — once a significant part of the electricity mix — has complicated energy planning and driven up costs.
Not investing in the gird for decades and stalling renewables for cheap Russian gas arguably was more of an impact.
> Merz argued that Germany’s rush to pivot away from nuclear energy, combined with extensive investment in renewable sources under the Energiewende policy, has made the transition unusually expensive.
Reliance on Russian gas has made everything expensive, but since his party is responsible for that, it's easier to scapegoat the departure of nuclear energy.
The only mistake was to depart from nuclear before reducing gas, since that would have reduced emissions quicker.
I'm from Germany and wanted to be a nuclear engineer. My mom to this days has a sticker on her car "Nuclear, no thank you". And she is an educated woman, a professional chemist.
It was what bought political victory at the time for the CDU, thats why it was done.
batteries are becoming dirt cheap, decentral production wins amidst clusterfucking climate catastrophes. solar and wind already are cheaper than anything else. the markets will adjust, simple as that.
any push to prolong the transition simply benefits fossil stakeholders.
The only thing worth discussing here is how a domain with like 10 snapshots on archive.org - half of them nginx errors - has this submission trending on Reddit and HN.
Trash Headline. He was not part of the Nuclear Exit, therefore he can not "admit" a mistake. He thinks it was and desperately wants it to be a mistake, no doubt.
The CSU/CDU Union party (from which Merz comes) has been, at least in recent historical time, consistently pro-nuclear (at least in terms of their actions). They have consistently voted to lengthen contracts with nuclear providers and consistently advocated for pro-nuclear policies, even when the power companies themselves had long since committed to ceasing all nuclear power production in Germany.
Additionally, the exit out of nuclear power was decided following public outcry after Fukushima -- ie, still squarely within the Merkel government. Merz has been consistently anti-Merkel.
So put into context, the article is saying "the current chancellor of Germany, Merz, thinks leaving nuclear behind was a strategic mistake!" while ignoring "whose party has consistently been pro-nuclear, whose predecessor, who (by the way) Merz doesn't like and frequently and loudly disagrees with, only presided over the decade-long phase-out in response to public outcry following a major nuclear disaster".
IMO this is about as newsworthy as what he ate for breakfast.
When you go to the German Wikipedia page about the Fukushima incident you can learn about the misleading reporting in Germany, even in the public broadcasting like ARD or renowned newspapers like Süddeutsche Zeitung (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuklearkatastrophe_von_Fukushi...). Many articles were published that claimed 18.000 casualties from the nuclear disaster while in reality it was the Tsunami.
Exiting nuclear power early was wrong. Wasting trillions on handouts from taxpayer money on new built nuclear power today is wrong. Just look at the French:
Flamanville 3 is 7x over budget and 13 years late on a 5 year construction schedule.
The subsidies for the EPR2 are absolutely insane. 11 cents/kWh fixed price and interest free loans. The earliest possible completion date for the first reactor is 2038.
France is wholly unable to build any new nuclear power as evidenced by Flamanville 3 and the EPR2 program.
As soon a new built nuclear costs and timelines face the real world it just does not square with reality.
The german energy policy has really been an economic failure on an epic scale.
They destroyed 30+ fully functional nuclear power plants because of fear of radiation. In the last 20 year spend >500billion € to remodel the energy grid. Now subsidizing electricity with ~30billion € per year.
And the result: Carbon intensity of energy production on the same level as US and 3x the electricity price!
This is lot of nonsense. The cost is mostly due to the funding of renewables at a time when they were still very expensive. This was highly successful in bringing down cost. Despite fakenews in this direction, fossil fuel consumption did not increase in Germany and is on the decline with a corresponding reductions in CO2 emissions. According to the following link Germany 338g / kWh Co emissions, US 384g /kWh.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/carbon-intensity-electric...
Why? Germany is not allowed to have nuclear weapons (2 + 4 contract). And this is the only reason nowadays to build nuclear power plants. The UK openly admits that this is the only reason why they build a very expensive nuclear power plant. Otherwise nuclear power is simply much too expensive.
So to summarize, they were wrong to move away from nuclear.
They were wrong to ban fuel vehicle at the EU scale.
They were wrong to welcome 1 million Syrian refugees.
They were wrong to cut off gaz from Russia.
At what point does that political class that has destroyed Europe, gets voted out for good, if not prosecuted ?
This is typical CDU conservative talk from Merz. He is on a war path with anything Angela Merkel did because she saw him as politically inexperienced and shunned him. So he had to work for Blackrock.
The CSU (the Bavarian equivalent and permanent coalition partner of the CDU) is also demanding to reactivate nuclear power plants but at the same time is not willing to store any spent nuclear fuel. The CSU is also notoriously anti renewables and does not want new power lines in their "beautiful scenery" to get the renewable power from northern Germany to Bavaria.
Economically, diplomatically, strategically, and environmentally probably the dumbest decision they could have made and something they will continue to feel repercussions from for at least another decade.
It’s not as loud as Brexit or Trump but likely equally as damaging to so many causes across the board.
The only silver lining from this monumental fuck up is that since sadly we only learn when consequences occur, they’re finally having to face the music and will hopefully plan for a better future.
The story of their shutdown is really quite crazy.
The shutdown was initiated by chancellor Gerhard Schröder. After killing Germany’s nuclear sector, he signed off on Nord Stream 1 as he was on his way out of office. Just after leaving office, Gazprom nominated him for the post of the head of the shareholders' committee of Nord Stream AG. Russia later nominated him to be on their largest oil producers board.
This guy basically sold out Germany’s energy independence for Russia.
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[ 554 ms ] story [ 1014 ms ] threadSo I don't think you could even call it a strategic mistake, but masochism maybe? Especially while keeping the exit date in the height of the fallout of a real strategic mistake, the dependence on cheap russian gas.
A decision to forego that benefit of energy density will be painful, especially if implemented quickly.
Involuntary XKCD:
https://xkcd.com/1162/
No, even fusion won't rescue the climate. Fission certainly could have helped in the transition.
> German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, admitted recently that Germany’s departure from nuclear energy was a serious strategic mistake, saying the policy has made the country’s energy transition “the most expensive in the entire world.”
Even if that were the case, nuclear had no impact on the cost of the transition.
> eliminating nuclear power — once a significant part of the electricity mix — has complicated energy planning and driven up costs.
Not investing in the gird for decades and stalling renewables for cheap Russian gas arguably was more of an impact.
> Merz argued that Germany’s rush to pivot away from nuclear energy, combined with extensive investment in renewable sources under the Energiewende policy, has made the transition unusually expensive.
Reliance on Russian gas has made everything expensive, but since his party is responsible for that, it's easier to scapegoat the departure of nuclear energy.
The only mistake was to depart from nuclear before reducing gas, since that would have reduced emissions quicker.
It was what bought political victory at the time for the CDU, thats why it was done.
batteries are becoming dirt cheap, decentral production wins amidst clusterfucking climate catastrophes. solar and wind already are cheaper than anything else. the markets will adjust, simple as that.
any push to prolong the transition simply benefits fossil stakeholders.
The CSU/CDU Union party (from which Merz comes) has been, at least in recent historical time, consistently pro-nuclear (at least in terms of their actions). They have consistently voted to lengthen contracts with nuclear providers and consistently advocated for pro-nuclear policies, even when the power companies themselves had long since committed to ceasing all nuclear power production in Germany.
Additionally, the exit out of nuclear power was decided following public outcry after Fukushima -- ie, still squarely within the Merkel government. Merz has been consistently anti-Merkel.
So put into context, the article is saying "the current chancellor of Germany, Merz, thinks leaving nuclear behind was a strategic mistake!" while ignoring "whose party has consistently been pro-nuclear, whose predecessor, who (by the way) Merz doesn't like and frequently and loudly disagrees with, only presided over the decade-long phase-out in response to public outcry following a major nuclear disaster".
IMO this is about as newsworthy as what he ate for breakfast.
Same like any bullcrap Söder comes up on any given day, no matter how absurd.
From a distance, it seems like the whole world agreed it'd be a good idea to only come up with ragebait over and over again :(
Flamanville 3 is 7x over budget and 13 years late on a 5 year construction schedule.
The subsidies for the EPR2 are absolutely insane. 11 cents/kWh fixed price and interest free loans. The earliest possible completion date for the first reactor is 2038.
France is wholly unable to build any new nuclear power as evidenced by Flamanville 3 and the EPR2 program.
As soon a new built nuclear costs and timelines face the real world it just does not square with reality.
At what point does that political class that has destroyed Europe, gets voted out for good, if not prosecuted ?
The CSU (the Bavarian equivalent and permanent coalition partner of the CDU) is also demanding to reactivate nuclear power plants but at the same time is not willing to store any spent nuclear fuel. The CSU is also notoriously anti renewables and does not want new power lines in their "beautiful scenery" to get the renewable power from northern Germany to Bavaria.
Economically, diplomatically, strategically, and environmentally probably the dumbest decision they could have made and something they will continue to feel repercussions from for at least another decade.
It’s not as loud as Brexit or Trump but likely equally as damaging to so many causes across the board.
The only silver lining from this monumental fuck up is that since sadly we only learn when consequences occur, they’re finally having to face the music and will hopefully plan for a better future.
The shutdown was initiated by chancellor Gerhard Schröder. After killing Germany’s nuclear sector, he signed off on Nord Stream 1 as he was on his way out of office. Just after leaving office, Gazprom nominated him for the post of the head of the shareholders' committee of Nord Stream AG. Russia later nominated him to be on their largest oil producers board.
This guy basically sold out Germany’s energy independence for Russia.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerhard_Schr%C3%B6der